The largest and most complete fossil of a sea dragon ever discovered in Britain has been unearthed by a wetland conservationist at work.
Researchers believe the fossil belongs to ichthyosaurus, an ancient marine reptile that was found in Earth's prehistoric oceans when dinosaurs roamed on land.
According to Science Alert, scientists have been collecting ichthyosaurs for more than 200 years, and the Rutland Ichthyosaur, sometimes known as the Rutland Sea Dragon, is the largest example recovered so far.
During normal landscaping work at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in the English Midlands, Joe Davis, a conservator with the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, discovered an exposed jawbone of the fossil in February 2021.
In a painstaking procedure lasting three weeks, the fossilized remains were retrieved from their murky tomb using plaster and splints to safeguard the enormous yet fragile specimen.
The 10-meter-long dinosaur and its 150-vertebrae-strong backbone were securely unearthed and extracted by a team of paleontologists, environmentalists, and volunteers despite the challenges of bird dung and bad weather.
According to visiting scientist Lomax at the University of Manchester, it is an unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British paleontology history.
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Extracting the Giant Fossil
About 250 million years ago, an animal called an ichthyosaur originally appeared and then went extinct, with sizes ranging from 1 meter (3.3 feet) to over 25 meters (85 feet).
The clay-rich rocks that encased the Rutland Sea Dragon were thought to have been deposited some 180 million years ago during the early Jurassic period, according to the researchers.
Local scientists had previously discovered two smaller, incomplete ichthyosaur skeletons in the same wetland area, so the discovery of a third was not a total surprise.
The discovery of the skeleton was only the first stage in the process of removing the enormous fossil: The skull alone weighed less than a tonne when it was covered in plaster.
Understanding the Environment Where the Ichthyosaur Inhabited
Despite its stunning appearance, the item is still protected by a plaster cast and is kept in a secure place where it cannot be examined in detail. After the discovery is cleaned up and preserved, the researchers hope to write academic articles about it.
"Despite the thousands of ichthyosaurs discovered in Britain, none of them are quite as large as this specimen, and few examples of this genus have been found in the UK that are this complete," said Paleontologist Nigel Larkin said.
The team obtained a 3D scan of the specimen before any bones were removed. Besides the main ichthyosaur specimen, researchers also collected fossils from the surrounding area, such as ammonites and belemnites, to better understand the ecosystem in which the ichthyosaur lived and died and to date the animal is approximately 182 million years old.
University of Leicester Mark Evans said, "If our identification of the ichthyosaur is correct, as a species called Temnodontosaurus trigonodon, this will provide new details on the geographic range of the species, as it hasn't been confirmed from the UK before"
The team seek to secure financing for the next stage of conservation, which involves cleaning and preparing the fossil, and then displaying the creature's skeleton in its natural habitat close to where it was discovered.
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